Category: family

At three months old Nicky is…

… Over binkies. I honestly can’t remember the last time he took one. He much prefers cramming his whole fist in his mouth and gnawing on that instead. In related news, he drools. A lot.

… Really into rolling from his back onto his side and just hanging out like that. He seems pretty close to a full roll onto his tummy but he still hates tummy time so I can’t imagine he’ll be thrilled about that accomplishment.

… A super sleeper. I would almost say he’s on a sleep schedule? The past few nights I’ve put him down in his bassinet fully awake at around 10pm and after wiggling and kicking his swaddle loose he falls asleep until 8 or 9am.

… The jolliest baby. The funniest thing to him right now is when I hold him by his hands and pull him up into a standing position, but almost any interaction will reward you with a huge gummy smile and giggles. Sometimes he snorts when he laughs.

… weighs 5.9kg… is 65cm long… has a head circumference of 41cm.

This week has been kiiiiind of difficult. Taylor is back at the office three days a week and so I’ve had my first nights alone with the kids. Nicky is actually sleeping through the night (I KNOW) but the hours he’s sleeping around exactly the right ones. The first two nights he fell asleep around 1am, which was Not Great as I had to get up early enough to walk the dogs before Sym left for school at 7:45. Last night he fell asleep at 10 which was SO GOOD… until he woke up at 5:30 this morning. Usually when he wakes up in the morning he just needs a change & a bottle and then falls right back to sleep, but today he stayed up until 5 minutes before my alarm went off. So like… just ideal, really.

Gwen also woke up at 5:30 today, and also didn’t go back to sleep. This was actually a big problem with her for a while, she’d wake up multiple times in the night and refuse to go back to bed until we let her look outside to see that it was still dark (this was a huge pain in the summer when it sometimes wasn’t dark but was too early to get up). We got her a clock that lights up green when she’s allowed to get up and it has been a huge help, but some days she still has a little trouble waiting. This morning she turned on the overhead light and I could hear her through the monitor dumping out about fifty bins of toys, but she wasn’t crying on banging on the door so I just let her play.

On Monday Gwen and I had a particularly tough day; neither of us was in a good mood and there was a lot of pushback from her when I asked her to do things (like cleaning up her toys) or not do things (like hitting the other kids). We had several big arguments and were both very frustrated. I felt bad about how rotten of a day we had so for the rest of this week I’ve tried to have more patience with her. Tuesday and Wednesday went a lot better, and yesterday we were walking home from the playground and I told her of how proud I was of her for being such a good listener and being helpful and patient, and she turned to me, holding her fingers thisclose together and said “You a lil bit proud a me?” Yes Gwen, a lil bit, and a big bit!

She is turning into such a big kid, in fact she told me on Tuesday that she is a big kid now, not a little kid anymore. We were on our way to the school to register her for kindergarten, which seems BONKERS. I just can’t believe that she’s going to be going to school next year! While we were at the front office a class came down to the library and she was SO EXCITED to seem them, she didn’t want to leave. In fact, she almost started to cry because she thought she’d get to start going to school right then! Since then she’s talked to me every day about going to school and asks if she can go “in two minute.” It is heartbreaking to tell her she can’t start for nine more months, but I for one am going to try to enjoy every day with my not-little but not-too-big girl.

How do people who stage elaborate scenes around their sleeping children do it? I couldn’t take one pic with these donut holes in a halo arrangement without Nicky’s flailing arms sending them rolling across the room.

“donut holes in a halo arrangement” …I need to reexamine my life.

At two months old Nicky is fully recovered from his nasty experience with meningitis. He regained all the weight he lost while he was sick and is now 5.32kg, 58cm tall and has a head circumference of 40cm. He usually sleeps through the night for six or seven hours at a time and is therefore the world’s best baby. He likes his Rockaroo now and is best friends with the mobile. He likes being carried in the Ergo but dislikes being put in the Ergo (babies are complicated). He often shows off his dimple by smiling at his favourite people, and will sometimes reward us for doing something funny with a breathy little giggle. He loves to snuggle and he still hates tummy time.

Today Nicky is one month old! Taylor and I were actually still up last night with him at the very moment when he was born, but we were watching Jane the Virgin (I just finished marathoning the first two seasons, almost in time to start season three!) and didn’t notice the time until 12:34am, 21 minutes after Nicky’s birth minute of 12:13am.

He had his four-week checkup on Friday and he now weighs 4.34kg, is 54cm tall and has a head circumference of 37.5cm. He also has the WORST infant acne I’ve ever seen right now, my poor spotty little baby. He is finally growing some eyebrows. His hair is turning light brown and his eyes are turning blue (although I’m not convinced they won’t end up green). He likes baths, bottles and his bassinet, hates diaper changes, post-bath massages and tummy time. He enjoys being swaddled and is ambivalent about binkies and the rockaroo. He’s most awake and active in the evening and sleeps for stretches of up to five hours.

When I was pregnant no one believed that I really didn’t have a preference about the sex of the baby. Even now people try to say that the reason I’m happy I had a boy is because I secretly wanted one all along, which is weird. People have also asked if I’m disappointed that I didn’t have another girl, and in a way I’m a little sad that I didn’t get to use the girl’s name I had picked, and sometimes I think about some of Sym and Gwen’s special clothes I saved that won’t be worn again, but these things? A name, some dresses? They don’t compare at all to how sweet and special he is, and how much I (and all of us) love him.

Happy one month, Nicky!